When Heaven Fell (7 page)

As soon as the yard was clear, Ba backed the red truck out onto the highway while Anh Hai watched the traffic, beckoning when it was clear and jumping into the passenger seat at the last minute.

Cuc waved from the bed of the truck.

Looping her arm through Di Thao’s, Ba Ngoai led her into the house.

Binh scooted ahead of them, reaching the doorway first. “This is our home,” she said, gesturing toward the big room.

Di’s eyes darted around as though she expected to see more. Her gaze lingered on the motorcycle parked in the corner, a small pool of oil underneath.

“Here is the kitchen,” Binh said, pointing toward the side room. The cooking fire flickered, lighting the walls black with wood smoke. A cat lay curled, sleeping near the fire.

Di squinted. “Is
that
where you cooked the delicious food?”

“Some of it,” Ba Ngoai answered. “Our relatives brought many dishes.”

Her eyebrows drawn together, Di studied the ancestral altar with its photographs of the ancestors, the pyramid of tangerines, the bananas and guavas, the wavering flames of the candles. Then she set down her suitcase. “Could you please show me where the bathroom is, Binh?”

Binh led Di outside and across the yard to the small outbuilding. She swung the door open to reveal a porcelain toilet set into the floor. Ma was proud of it: a real toilet instead of a cement trough.

As proof of how special the toilet was, Di took a picture, brightening the room with the flash.

While Binh leaned close to see the tiny toilet in Di’s camera, Di Thao stared at the real toilet. “I think I need a lesson on how to use that.”

“You put your feet on either side, like this.” Binh lifted her dress and demonstrated. “Then you squat down. Afterward, you dip the ladle in the bucket to wash the toilet.”

“I don’t remember using this before. When I lived here, we just had a hole in the ground.”

“Many people have holes, Di. This is a modern toilet.”

Di laughed. “In America, we have toilets you sit on like a chair.”

“I’ve seen those in movies. I would love to see the toilets in America.”

Di laughed.

Binh leaned close to whisper, “I would love to
use
the toilets in America.”

Di laughed again. “There’s more interesting things than toilets.”

“I would love to see those other things too.”

Di didn’t respond, but looked around, saying, “How do I wash myself?”

Binh opened the door to a small closet. Inside were a barrel of water and a bucket. “Here’s water to splash over you.”

Di dipped her hand in the barrel. “It’s
cold,
Binh.”

“Yes.” Of course it was cold.

Di shivered. “I guess I’ll wait until morning for a shower.” She looked at the toilet again.

“I’ll be right outside,” Binh said, shutting the door behind her.

When Di came out, she said, “And now, if it’s okay, I’d like to go to bed. I feel like I’ve come to the edge of the world.”

Binh laughed. Di was right. This
was
the edge of the world, not the center. Binh always felt she lived outside the place where real life happened.

“I’m exhausted,” Di said, passing a hand across her forehead.

“You look very beautiful anyway.”

Di reached out and mussed Binh’s hair. “You know how to say nice things to people, don’t you?”

Binh smoothed her hair and led the way across the yard. After the talk about toilets, she and Di were on intimate terms. Things were going well.

When she pushed open the door, Ma and Ba Ngoai sat huddled together, whispering. They grew silent when Di entered the house.

Binh walked across the room. “You’ll sleep right here between me and Ma.” She touched the yellow linoleum floor with her toe.

Di glanced around as though afraid of ghosts.

“Don’t worry — you’ll be close to all of us,” Binh reassured her, unrolling Di’s sleeping mat.

Just then, Ba and Anh Hai came back from returning the truck. Instead of feeding the dogs or organizing the motorcycle repair tools, they sat down next to Ma and Ba Ngoai.

They were all waiting, Binh realized. Waiting for Di Thao to unpack her suitcase. Now that everyone else was gone, maybe Di would bring out the real gifts, the gifts for Binh and her close family alone to see.

Binh smiled, thinking again of dangly earrings, or maybe a ring with a pretty stone.

Di pulled her suitcase close. The top banged open against the yellow floor and Di lifted out a small reddish book. “I have something to show you,” she announced, settling down on the sleeping mat.

Binh’s heart danced up and down. What could it be?

Ba Ngoai sat close on Di’s one side, Binh on the other. Anh Hai, Ba, and Ma crossed their legs and sat directly in front.

“These are photos.” Di placed the book on one knee and tapped it with her fingertip.

Binh’s heart danced faster. Photos were even better than stories.

Di slipped the photographs out of the plastic holders and passed them around.

“These are my American parents,” Di explained.

Binh found herself staring into the eyes of a man and a woman with hair the color of Ma’s cone-shaped hats.

Ba Ngoai held each photo for a long time — examining the woman standing alone in a gray dress, the man with his arm around Di’s shoulders, the three of them posed together by a fountain. Ba Ngoai looked and looked.

As Ba Ngoai watched Di put away the faces of her American parents, she asked, “Are you happy, Daughter?”

Di looked surprised, but said, “Very happy, Ma.”

“Really happy?” Ba Ngoai persisted.

“Really. And now, dear family, good night,” Di said. She lay down, turned herself over twice, and slept.

After a breakfast of rice porridge flavored with green onions and small bits of pork, Di opened the photo album again.

Everyone moved close and the room grew hushed.

This time, Di opened to a photograph of a white building. Dark green bushes grew on either side of a long path to the door.

“This is my house in Kentucky,” Di said.

Binh looked up to see if Di was joking. The building was huge!

“Your house is almost as large as the Buddhist temple,” Ba said, his eyes wide.

Anh Hai leaned over, looking at the photo upside down, his forehead lined with furrows.

Di flipped through the pictures. “My sleeping room, the room for people who visit me, the room for living, the eating room, kitchen, and toilet.”

The room for guests had a high bed. Binh imagined climbing into that bed. No ghost would reach her up there. She laid a fingertip on the glossy plastic, wishing she could touch the lacy fabric covering the bed.

“That toilet chair looks very easy, very nice,” Binh said. “I would like to try it one day,” she reminded Di.

“Who else lives there?” Ma asked, squinting, as though trying to see people in the rooms.

Di shrugged. “There’s only me.”

Binh knew what everyone had to be thinking — this house in America had plenty of space for her whole family. In fact, it could hold several Vietnamese families.

“Aren’t you lonely?” Ba Ngoai asked. She sat so close to Di that loose strands of her hair brushed Di’s cheek.

“I’m never lonely. I see lots of people at the school where I teach.”

“But you have no children, no husband,” said Ba.

“I like living alone.”

Alone?
Binh looked at Di to see if she was serious. If she liked living alone, what would she do with all of them?

“And here,” Di said, turning to another page, “are my Vietnamese friends. The ones I learn Vietnamese from.”

Three women posed in front of a bush of yellow flowers, wearing Western clothes.

“This one is a teacher at my school,” Di said, tapping the face of the woman on the left. “I met the others through her. This one is an eye doctor. And this one has her own beauty salon. She does fingernails. But not mine.” Di laughed and held out her hands, showing the plain nails.

Binh ran her thumb over her own short ones, glad suddenly that hers were just like Di’s.

“These are pictures of my school,” she said.

This place was even bigger than Di’s house — two stories tall, made of yellow brick, as large as buildings Binh had seen in pictures of Ho Chi Minh City.

Binh looked closely. So this was how a school looked inside — rows of desks and chairs. Instead of the blue and white uniforms of Vietnam, the children were dressed in regular clothes. Didn’t they have money for uniforms? And such plain clothes . . . plain like Di Hai’s.

A few of the children had black hair. Just a few had narrow, brown eyes. Most had round eyes. Some hair was light brown like Di Hai’s. Other hair shone like the sun. One girl had hair the color of the orange cat that visited Binh’s cart.

Binh had an urge to put her finger on one of the desks in the front row of the classroom. She would sit right there. The teacher would hang her work on the wall.

“Tell me about these girls,” Binh said. “Tell me all about American girls. Do they all have cell phones?”

Di laughed. “Most do. Other than that, they’re a lot like you, Binh. They like friends. And clothes. They have schoolwork to do. . . .”

Binh bit her lip.
Schoolwork.
How would she catch up with those American girls? She didn’t even speak English. Instead of sitting in that front row, she’d be hiding in the back. She’d have no work for the teacher to hang.

As Binh looked away from the pictures of the school, Ba Ngoai, glancing at her, said, “It’s time for us to visit the house of the ancestors.”

P
lans had been made to take Di Thao to the house of the ancestors the morning after her arrival. All the relatives wanted to accompany her on the trip down the highway and up the hill on the other side of the river. They were waiting under the arch of bougainvillea in the yard, beneath the spreading tree. The men stood with their hands clasped in front of them, and the women leaned close to chat, crossing their arms and tucking their hands into their sleeves.

Children chased each other wielding long juicy stems notched so they snapped like whips.

Cuc, in a yellow dress with white dots and the hem let down, asked Binh, “How is your auntie?”

Binh paused. How
was
Di Thao? “She’s doing well,” she replied.

“Did she give you anything more?”

“Not yet.”

Cuc made a face. “Why isn’t she more generous?”

Binh thought again of her silly blue rock. “She showed us photographs,” she said.

“Pictures?” Cuc wrinkled her nose. “What can you do with a picture?”

Binh couldn’t explain how each photo opened a window in her mind, windows she looked through to places she’d never dreamed existed.

But she also thought of how instead of placing the photos of her parents on the ancestral altar, Di had slipped them back into the plastic and put them away.

She thought of how Cuc had given Di Hai her bit of gold silk. All for nothing.

Binh found Di Hai standing beside the big table, gazing at the baskets of tiny bananas, translucent yellow star fruit, and the purple lilies that Ma and Ba Ngoai had prepared early in the morning. “So beautiful,” she murmured to Binh.

The relatives whispered among themselves, glancing at Di Thao from time to time.

“Why do they all keep staring at me?” Di asked.

“They think your dress is pretty,” Binh answered, although the olive green dress hung plainly on Di’s tall body. She didn’t add that it wasn’t only the dress they talked about behind Di’s back, but also Di’s lack of husband and children, and her job teaching a useless subject.

Cuc came to the table too. In fact, she pushed herself in between Binh and Di, taking Binh’s place.

Binh noticed that Cuc’s yellow dress was ironed, making Binh’s dress look even plainer.

Usually, Binh loved being with Cuc. But today her presence felt different, as though Cuc were trying to steal something that was hers.

“Your mother wants you,” Binh said to Cuc.

“Where is she?” Cuc stood on tiptoe, peering out over the sea of faces.

“Over there,” Binh gestured vaguely. “She was waving and calling your name.”

When Cuc had left, Binh seized Di’s hand in preparation for the procession. “We’ll start walking to the house of the ancestors soon,” she told her. “Ba Ngoai,” she called, “take Di Hai’s other hand.”